The Clintons

The Daily Beast’s Tim Mak has an unintentionally hilarious piece on the state of La Clinton’s “pre-campaign” hires and how the current “all-white, all-male” cast has Democrat strategists hitting the panic button:

Hillary Clinton’s pre-presidential campaign has made some high-profile hires recently—but all of them, so far, are white males. And Democrats have noticed.

Does Hillary Clinton need binders full of women?

Some Democrats, particularly women and people of color, think so.

In interviews with The Daily Beast, nearly a dozen Democrats, said they were worried Clinton’s hires for the top echelons of her pre-campaign haven’t taken gender and racial diversity into account.

Their concern started after early leaks about heavy hitters recruited for the likely 2016 presidential candidate’s proto-campaign all had two distinct things in common: they were white and male.

“Democrats need a leader that can bring together races and nationalities, especially now and especially to win. That starts at the top of the campaign, and Hillary Clinton will need to demonstrate that level of commitment to set the right tone and strategy going forward” said Aimee Allison, senior VP at PowerPAC+, a group founded by major Democratic donor Steve Phillips to build the “political power of the multiracial majority.”

The situation is altogether more jarring, several Democrats interviewed said, when one considers 2008 Hillary’s campaign manager was Patti Solis Doyle, the first Hispanic woman to manage a presidential campaign.

One operative quipped that the top levels of the campaign are in danger of looking like “white dudefest 2016.”

And it gets even better. Read on:

The Democrats who spoke to The Daily Beast didn’t want to be named for a variety of reasons: some were trying to land campaign positions in the 2016 election cycle, or their bosses are expected to support Hillary, or they feared retribution and wanted to speak freely.

The frustrations over racial and gender diversity are especially acute among those staffers who worked on the most recent Obama campaign. Many of them found that women and minority staffers were not elevated to the very top rungs of the campaign structure—nor did they receive nearly enough credit for its eventual success.

One post-campaign retrospective from Rolling Stone drew particular ire—it pointed out ten of the Obama campaign’s ‘real heroes,’ nine of whom were men.

The question of diversity Clinton could face was handled improperly by Obama in the last election cycle, said a strategist who worked on the president’s reelection campaign.

“On these historic campaigns, where you’re trying to change the very image of what the word ‘president’ evokes, what you think of when you think of the word ‘president,’ the leadership was pretty male, pretty white,” she said.

And related to “Hillary 2016″ talk, Mike Allen at Politico has a good read on her (predicted) future political plans, and talked to numerous Democrats “close to the Clintons” who say she will officially launch her second campaign for President in April and that massive preparation is underway in advance of the expected announcement. The article also says Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), long speculated to be running and who could have quite possibly been Hillary’s toughest competition in the primaries, “is making no behind-the-scenes preparations” – so apparently Warren was serious when she said she had no plans to run.

As they say, stay tuned, because there’s never a dull moment when it comes to the Clinton political machine … nor the media’s love/hate relationship with Bill and Hill.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton embraces Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel during an appearance to promote her new book, Wednesday, June 11, 2014, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Stacy Thacker)

Prominent conservative talker Glenn Beck is making waves this week in like-minded & non-like-minded alike circles with his prediction that Hillary Clinton will win the presidency in 2016. Via The Politico:

Hillary Clinton will be the next president, Glenn Beck said on his radio show Tuesday.

Beck saida friend of his spoke with “some Hillary people” about her 2016 campaign strategy and after he heard it, he realized the former first lady and secretary of state would become the next White House occupant.

“You guys are going to all be fighting on Benghazi and everything else,” Beck said his friend told him. “And here is what Hillary is going to do: ‘Do you remember when America was good? Do you remember when America, we had jobs and we were building towards a brighter future? And things were really happening? Clinton administration. We had it under control. Things were good, they weren’t great. We’re going to do better. But we’re going to replant our flag in the traditional things that you understand. But the traditional things in the Clinton administration. We could talk about Ronald Reagan all we want. … But the Clinton years were the golden years.’”

[…]

“While we’re talking about technicalities and the past, they’re going to be talking about a past that was brightly remembered, and they will talk about the America we will become,” he added. “She. Will. Win.”

As much respect as I have for Glenn Beck and his opinions on all things political, I’m not buying it. This is the exact campaign Hillary Clinton ran in 2007-08 against Barack Obama. ‘Vote for me and we’ll return to the glory years you saw before President Bush was elected’, blah blah. And she lost. Granted, she wouldn’t be running against a slick talker like Barack Obama the second time around, but that doesn’t mean it’d be smooth sailing for her during the primaries, especially if Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has become a major darling in hard-line Democrat circles, throws her hat into the ring. As much as the left would love to “coronate” Hillary as the first female president in US history, they want someone who embodies more of their core left wing values and Hillary is largely seen right now as conveniently “playing it safe” and “down the middle” rather than attempting to appeal to her party’s base – unlike Warren – also a woman, of course, and one who is unashamedly liberal.

There seems to be this growing sense of “inevitability” – even on our side – that Hillary will be elected the next president. Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I don’t think her election is a done deal. There’s still a lot of ground to cover – both for her potential Democrat and Republican challengers, and for Hillary as well – between now and the time everyone starts announcing their intentions, and in an era where the “fresh and new and different” kind of candidates seem to be more appealing to the masses, someone like La Clinton who has been a national political fixture since the early 1990s may end up struggling to make it into the top three in the primaries.

Of course, it’s early still – and anything is possible so, as they say, stay tuned …

It’s about time a President said it. Too bad it’s not the one currently occupying the White House. Via Mike Wereschagin and Salena Zito from the Tribune-Review:

Former President Bill Clinton on Saturday sharply criticized Hamas for deliberately endangering civilians and using international aid to build a network of tunnels into Israel.

Speaking at a memorial service for Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife, Clinton lamented the series of foreign policy crises that have cropped up from Eastern Europe to the Middle East in recent weeks.

“How could the people in Gaza, who started rocketing Israel, think that it was OK to use international aid money to dig tunnels to increase their ability to destabilize the region and kill people?” Clinton told about 150 Trib Total Media employees at the memorial service at Scaife’s boyhood home in Ligonier.

Israeli officials list the destruction of the tunnels, which Hamas has used for a series of incursions into Israel, as a chief objective of the 26-day-old war in Gaza.

The Israeli government has come under increasing international pressure, including criticism from the United States, for bombing and shelling that killed more than 1,600 Palestinian civilians, many of them children. About 60 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians have died.

But Clinton blamed the rising civilian death toll on Hamas as well, saying they deliberately placed munitions where civilians seek shelter, then use their deaths to foment international anti-Israeli sentiment.

“How could they put rockets in a school to follow a deliberate strategy to force the deaths of their own civilians so as to make Israel look bad in the world?” Clinton said.

Meanwhile, the dangerously clueless wonders in the White House all but accused Israel over the weekend of deliberately targeting civilians (including children). Criticism of Israel isn’t in and of itself wrong, but can’t they at least get their facts right before they condemn a staunch ally in public statements and on national television, in effect further fanning the flames of discontent and rage? Is that really too much to ask of this administration?

Maybe not exactlywhat you wanted to knowabout the Vice President, but we need a little “lighter side” news these days, and this story is a perfect fit:

It’s the Joe Biden you didn’t know — and might not want to see.

Secret Service agents dread being assigned to protect the vice president, in part because Biden’s a big fan of skinny dipping, according to a new tell-all book.

In “The First Family Detail,” author Ronald Kessler quotes unnamed Secret Service agents dishing about the supposedly “hidden lives” of Presidents and the other important people they protect.

Biden is portrayed as being more interested in coming off as a “regular Joe” than being potentially responsible for the nation’s nuclear codes.

Not to mention he’s a guy who apparently doesn’t have a problem getting naked.

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive.”

[…]

Between Biden’s “lack of consideration as evidenced by” his naked aquatics and his supposedly incessant last-minute schedule changes, “being assigned to his detail is considered the second worst assignment in the Secret Service,” Kessler writes.

Coming in at No. 1, per Kessler: Protecting Hillary Clinton.

While news of Biden’s alleged swims in the buff is a bit shocking, Hillary’s being difficult for the Secret Service to handle, well – let’s just say there are no surprises there ….

The Politico has publisheda piecewritten by Weekly Standard’s Daniel Harper detailing some of the (predictable) attacks the Clinton machine waged against him in response to his writing of a book critical to both Hillary and Bill Clinton:

When I started to write Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine, I knew the reaction to expect. I was well aware that the former (and perhaps future) first family and its massive retinue of loyalty enforcers, professional defamers and assorted gadflies would rue my intent to examine the real Clintons—especially in my search for the real Chelsea Clinton, who until now has been a media-protected nonperson despite her aggressive public activities on her family’s behalf and despite raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from her role as former first daughter.

[…]

But even if I hadn’t known it, many, many people in Washington, on the left and right, popped up to warn me of what to expect from the Clinton PR team. Other authors—legitimate ones with serious pedigrees—who’d written about the Clintons said they were threatened and verbally attacked. Of course, nearly everyone in Washington has seen the much-vaunted Clinton PR machine in action. It’s very predictable. Here’s how it works:

1) Media intimidation tactics: Following their usual method of operation, the first thing Team Clinton would do is attempt a media blackout. A producer with CNN said I’d never be able to get any airtime on her show because the Clintons punish networks that give space to their perceived enemies. So far, even claims in my book that were well sourced with on-the-record quotes—such as Bill Clinton offering counsel to John McCain in how to defeat Barack Obama in 2008—have been all but ignored by the mainstream media.

2) Defame and attack:There would be repeated efforts to turn me into a kook or right-wing hit man. Though they haven’t yet gone so far to label me a “crazed stalker” like they did with Monica Lewinsky, the reliable Clinton aide Nick Merrill has repeatedly deployed a classic Clinton spin line on my work—before it was even on sale, mind you, and presumably he hadn’t yet read it. “It’s sad to see Daniel Halper join the discredited and disgraced ranks” of other authors supposedly out to get them at all costs, he emailed the Huffington Post. Sadly, I received no credit from the Clintons or from Merrill for the praise of both Bill (that he’s a “political genius) and Hillary (that she’s “intensely likable”) in various parts of the book. Merrill also claimed I was just out “to make a buck.” Which I take it means that Bill and Hillary Clinton donated all the proceeds of their millions in book deals to charity?

Heh.

Since it’s inevitable (in my view) that La Clinton is going to run again, I’d encourage you to buy Halper’s book for a refresher course … in case you need it … on who the Clintons are, what to expect in the coming months, etc. Also, Michael Crowley wrotean illuminating pieceon the Clintons at the left-leaning New Republic back in 2007 thatsheds some serious lighton the devious Clinton war room in action. There’s a reason they typically get favorable coverage, folks, and it’s not always because the media leans left.

President Obama has quietly promised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren complete support if she runs for president — a stinging rebuke to his nemesis Hillary Clinton, sources tell me.

Publicly, Obama has remained noncommittal on the 2016 race, but privately he worries that Clinton would undo and undermine many of his policies. There’s also a personal animosity, especially with Bill Clinton, that dates from their tough race six years ago.

A former Harvard law professor and administration aide, Warren would energize the left wing of the Democrat Party just as Obama did against Clinton in 2008.

Thanks to her outspoken stand against big banks and the top 1 percent, Warren is the darling of progressives. She won her Senate seat thanks to millions of dollars in donations from outside Massachusetts, including from rich environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities.

Obama has authorized his chief political adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw her hat into the ring.

In the past several weeks, Jarrett has held a series of secret meetings with Warren. During these meetings, Jarrett has explained to Warren that Obama is worried that if Hillary succeeds him in the White House, she will undo many of his policies.

Back in April, Legal Insurrection’sBill Jacobson wrote of his belief that Senator Warren would “crush” Clinton in the Democrat primaries because she’s even more left wing than Hillary:

Forget the current polling as between Hillary and Elizabeth Warren. It pits Hillary against someone who “isn’t running.”

For all my criticisms of Warren, and they are extensive, I am convinced that if she ran, she would crush Hillary, just as Obama did.

Warren, as did Obama, has a unique ability to demagogue the core Democratic narrative of victimhood in ways that would make Hillary blush. She is more cunning than Hillary, more popular with the base, would bring an excitement the contrived Ready-for-Hillary movement could only dream of. Democrats may be “ready” for Hillary, but they don’t really want her.

He referenced a Byron York piece written around the same time that listed several reasons why Warren should run whether or not La Clinton decides to do the same:

1. Life is unpredictable.Clinton will be 69 years old on inauguration day 2017, nearly the oldest president ever. She has had a few health scares. By all accounts, she left her previous four-year stint in government service exhausted. She might not run, and the Democrat in second place in the polls, Vice President Joe Biden — 74 on inauguration day — is too old to be president. Beyond them, Democrats have nobody — except Elizabeth Warren.

2. Parties need competition.The primary process isn’t just to allow voters to pick a nominee. It’s for the candidates to become better candidates. The rigors of campaigning, the day-to-day jostle with competitors and the stress of high-profile debates all make candidates better. Conversely, a cakewalk through the primaries could leave a nominee in poor fighting shape for a general election. Warren would make Clinton a better candidate, and vice-versa.

3. The Left wants a hero. Clinton has never really excited the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. They see her as an overcautious centrist like her husband, and on top of that, many have never forgiven her for voting to authorize the war inIraq. Warren, on the other hand, has thrilled the Left with her attacks on inequality, plutocrats and big financial institutions.

4. Hillary ran a dumb campaign in 2008 and might do so again. For a group of seasoned veterans, the 2008 Clinton campaign showed a stunning ignorance of how to win delegates in a Democratic contest. Rival Barack Obama exploited that weakness brilliantly. For example, Obama collected more net delegates by winning the Idaho caucuses, with 21,000 participants, than Clinton did by winning theNew Jerseyprimary, with more than 1 million voters. Clinton just didn’t pay attention to the smaller stuff, particularly the caucuses, and her cluelessness helped Obama win. It might help another rival in 2016.

5. One more time: Life is unpredictable.This is Warren’s only chance to run. She will be 67 on Inauguration Day 2017. (Has any party ever fielded a group as old as Clinton, Biden and Warren?) A run in 2020 or later is out of the question. Hillary, now struggling to define her legacy asSecretary of State, is running on pure entitlement. The only thing about her candidacy that truly excites the Democratic base is that she would be the first woman president. Of course, that applies to Elizabeth Warren, too. And Warren would present a far fresher face to voters than Clinton, who has been in the national spotlight since 1992.

Heck, I dunno what the future holds for either of them – in spite of the fact that I’ve predicted outright that Hillary will make one last try of it in 2016. As noted above, Senator Warren is an unashamed Massachusetts liberal while Hillary likes to pretend she’s a middle of the road type. Not only that, there is no love lost between the Clintons and the Obamas – in spite of public appearances to the contrary – especially when it comes to Bill and the President, so it certainly wouldn’t be outside of the realm of possibility that Obama has already placed his legacy cards in Senator Warren’s basket, believing she would be a viable female contender for President against Hillary. No matter what happens, though, one thing I’ll be doing over the next few months as decisions are made and announced is stocking up on the popcorn, because things are shaping up to be quite interesting in terms of potential 2016 contenders, at least on the Democrat side ….

Yes, my friends, it’s time once again for one of our favorite games, “If it had been a Republican…”

Remember, how, back in the 2012 campaign, the press and the Democrat support groups (redundant, I know) hounded Republican nominee Mitt Romney over supposed misstatements and gaffes while on a foreign tour? I can recall one incident in particular, when Romney was in Poland and his campaign wanted to deal US foreign policy issues, a reporter chased after him shouting “What about your gaffes??” The purpose, of course, was to plant the idea with the public that Mitt’s minor faux pas showed he wasn’t qualified to be president.

The former Secretary of State, who’s been heavily promoting her new book “Hard Choices” in a likely precursor to running for president in 2016, appeared to state the Conservative and Tory Parties in Britain were rival political parties during a BBC interview.

“Tory” is in fact another name for the Conservative Party in Britain.

Asked by the host what she thought of the “Special Relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain, Clinton declared it was “very special between our countries.”

“There’s not just a common language, but a common set of values that we can fall back on,” she said. “It doesn’t matter in our country whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat or frankly, in your country, whether it’s a Conservative or a Tory. There is a level of trust and understanding. That doesn’t mean we always agree because, of course, we don’t.”

As the article points out, Hillary was our Secretary of State, who had to deal with our close allies in the UK on a nearly daily basis, and yet she didn’t know “Tory” and “Conservative” were synonyms? It reminds me of the recent Obama ambassadorial appointee who didn’t know his soon-to-be host country, Norway, has a king and not a president.

For supposedly being so much smarter than everyone else and for all their claiming to know what’s best for us, progressives sure are ignorant of the wider world, no?

Of course, it could easily have been a simple slip of the tongue on Hillary’s part, saying “Conservative and Tory” when she meant “Conservative and Labor,” the kind of mental backfire we’re all subject to from time to time.

But not all of us are (probably) running for president, an office that has almost sole control over US foreign affairs, including relations with one of our closest allies.

And so I expect the MSM to grill Hillary mercilessly over this gaffe, hounding her incessantly with questions about her competence and knowledge

Hillary Clinton is in hot water over a $225,000 speaking fee she will reportedly receive for an upcoming appearance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

UNLV students aredemandingClinton to return what they see as an “outrageous” speaking fee for an October event and have criticized the school for paying her so much money at a time when tuition is scheduled to spike by 17 percent over the next four years.

“We really appreciate anybody who would come to raise money for the university,” UNLV student body president Elias Benjelloun told a Nevada television station. “But anybody who’s being paid $225,000 to come speak, we think that’s a little bit outrageous. And we’d like Secretary Clinton, respectfully, to gracefully return to the university or the foundation.”

Benjelloun said the potential 2016 presidential contender should donate her fee to the university.

[…]

Republicans have spread a video of student leaders slamming the university’s decision, hoping to paint Clinton as out of touch with working families, much the same way as Democrats attacked Mitt Romney for being too rich in the 2012 presidential campaign.

It’s not often we see liberals hoisted by their own petards, so to speak, and I have to admit that I’m immensely enjoying the Clintons’ decades-old class warfare arguments being turned against them at a critical time in the run-up to the former Sec. of State’s expected (expected by me) announcement at another run for President.

For better or worse, Democrats have “set the standard” upon which the so-called “rich” should be judged going back many years, and Mrs. Clinton right now is on the receiving end of the negative backlash of a ridiculous, divisive (not to mention double) standard she and her party have held Republicans to since they’ve been active in politics, one which is now being used as a criticism against … her. It is to laugh.

Lady Macbeth sure stuck her foot in it when she claimed she and Bill were “broke” when they left the White House — just before moving into a multi-million dollar home in Chappaqua, New York, that is. Now even liberal PBS is giving her a Spockian raised eyebrow at her claims to know what it’s like to struggle financially, to be one with the middle class. Hot Air has the video, but I want to call your attention to this bit:

“I shouldn’t have said the five or so words that I said, but my inartful use of those few words doesn’t change who I am,” Clinton told PBS NewsHour’s Gwen Ifill on Wednesday, referring to comments she made that she and her husband Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House. She later tried to clarify her comments by saying the couple was different from others who are “truly well off” and don’t pay “ordinary income tax.”

In the interview, Clinton accused others of taking her comments out of context or trying to “create some caricature.” When Ifill noted that such a strategy “sticks sometimes—ask Mitt Romney,” Clinton emphatically rebuked the connection.

“That’s a false equivalency,” Clinton said. “People can judge me for what I’ve done. And I think when somebody’s out in the public eye, that’s what they do. So I’m fully comfortable with who I am, what I stand for and what I’ve always stood for.”

She’s right, it is a false equivalency. Mitt Romney, after all, made his wealth the Evil Way(tm)(1): he earned it by starting his own business, working long hours, taking risks until he found himself a multi-millionaire, at which point he turned himself toward public service.

Hillary, on the other hand, earned her money the Good Way(tm)(2): by marrying herself to a rising star of a politician, perhaps the most skillful of his age, and sticking with him through thick and thin — ignoring that he was a randy old goat of a serial philanderer who humiliated her publicly and, per Christopher Hitchens, may be a rapist — until she reached the White House. After some nondescript years in the Senate, she got her next big break, becoming Secretary of State… by the grace of the man who beat her in the 2008 primaries. Over all these years, from wife of a governor to wife of a president to chief diplomat for another president, any fortune she’s made and power she’s accumulated has been based on her dependence on men.

Yep, it is wrong to draw an equivalency between Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.

And unfair to Mitt.

PS: Yes, this was mean of me, but her faux-feminism, her hypocrisy about wealth, and her ludicrous “woman of the people” act makes me ill.

(Reuters) – Former U.S. President Bill Clinton jumped to his wife Hillary’s defense on Tuesday, saying that the potential presidential candidate is “not out of touch,” after criticism that she mishandled media questions about their personal wealth.

Hillary Clinton told ABC News earlier this month that the couple had been “dead broke” after leaving the White House in 2001 and then drew more fire after suggesting to The Guardian newspaper last weekend that the Clintons are not “truly well off.”

“It is factually true that we were several million dollars in debt,” Bill Clinton said Tuesday of the couple’s previous financial situation. He was speaking to NBC News’ David Gregory, in an interview that will air on Sunday.

Bill Clinton said his wife, a former secretary of state and likely Democratic contender for the White House in 2016, has been working to reduce poverty for as long as he has known her, and that this was reflected in her tenure in the U.S. Senate.

The Clintons’ finances have become a tricky subject for her possible White House ambitions.

Hillary Clinton, who did not grow up wealthy, has given a series of speeches that earn her up to $250,000 each since leaving the State Department in 2013. Bill Clinton also delivers lucrative speeches, and tax returns released in 2007 showed the two had earned $109 million jointly since 2001. The couple owns a pair of homes – one in Washington and one in Chappaqua, New York.

To sum up: What have we re-established from all this back and forth regarding La Clinton’s ridiculous – not to mention unbelievable – comments on the family’s wealth? That the infamous, willfully deceptive Clinton PR/spin machine is alive and well, and that both of them will still say and do anything they can for another chance at the White House. Some things never change …